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As I wind down my posts about Chile (next stop will be the Inland Northwest, U.S.), it seems fitting to give a thumbnail look at the history of the city that hosted me for a month. As the second oldest Spanish…Continue reading→

As I looked east from the town of Castro on Chiloé, across the gray waters of the Gulf of Corcovado, I imagined the small town of Chaitén on the far side. It was a place I very much wanted to visit…Continue reading→

Month after month, year after year, the Río Valdivia makes its unending way to the sea. Against that visually static backdrop, a variety of creatures live out their lives above, on, and below the water. These creatures need the river or…Continue reading→

Although I spent a month in Valdivia, I’ll always be a tourist, determined to explore as many tourist-brochure highlights as possible. That has taken me to squat military towers, the fish market and craft marketplace, an enclosed Foucault pendulum, a botanical…Continue reading→

Though it wasn’t planned, I visited four different churches on four of the Sundays I was in Chile. Thrust into theology: The first Sunday, I stopped at Iglesia de San Francisco en Valdivia, a Gothic stone Roman Catholic church located in…Continue reading→

A day after my trip to Termas Geométricas, I was back on a Valdivia Tours bus with the same driver/guide — along with a middle-aged couple, an aunt and her niece, all from the Santiago region — heading out in the…Continue reading→

Booking a tour from Valdivia in the off-season is no easy task, but eventually the stars aligned and I joined Valdivia Tours early one morning for a day’s outing to the Termas Geométricas (Geometrical Hot Springs). In a region east of Valdivia,…Continue reading→

Both Puerto Rico, where I lived for many years, and Chile have a rich Amerindian heritage. But while Puerto Rico’s Indians, the Tainos, exist only in the DNA of many islanders, the Mapuches of southern Chile are very much alive and…Continue reading→

Names of cities, buildings, and streets can give you a glimpse into a region’s past. Why was a town in southern Chile given the English name, Cochrane? How did Pedro Montt become immortalized in street names across the country? And who…Continue reading→

How can sites of incredible beauty – massive snow-topped peaks, conical volcanoes, forest-bordered lakes, and ghostly thermal springs – also be connected to events of great tragedy? The answer lies in geology. Zona Sur: Chile’s Zona Sur (one of five distinct…Continue reading→